What exactly is a business owner today?
At its core, a business owner is someone who organizes inputs — labor, capital, materials — toward an output in the form of goods and services. They work to monopolize those inputs, package them neatly into a brand, and make transacting with them as smooth as possible.
It has been incredibly lucrative to be a business owner because there has always been a need to organize these inputs in the market place. However this era we are entering into changes everything. Now we have AI and AI is the ultimate organizer.
When agentic AI systems reach maturity, will the role of “business owner” even exist in the same way?
It’s possible we’re moving toward a world where everyone is in service to everyone else, with AI coordinating the match between skills and needs in real time.
That doesn’t mean jobs “disappear” — it means jobs as we know them dissolve. Employment won’t depend on whether a company has an open position. It will depend on whether you want to work and what skill you’re willing to offer.
If you’re expecting to find the security and comfort of “getting hired,” the future might feel bleak.
But if you shift your perspective toward the skills you bring — and the willingness to offer them directly to those who need them — you’ll always have opportunity.
The real question:
👉 Are we ready to think of work as skill-sharing rather than job-holding?